He Was A Dandy Before It Was Cool

March 4, 2013 2:05 PM

This year's winner of the Eustace Tilley contest features a Brooklyn hipster. The New Yorker Magazine received hundreds of entries for the contest. A little bit more about Eustace. (Previously.)

Some standouts:

Gangnam Style.
Another Hipster.
Eustace-Gram.
Yet Another Hipster.
Ecce Tilley.
Tramp Stamp.
Planking Tilley.
Words With Fops.
Sandy.

posted by chavenet (33 comments total)

I saw that cover and saw it as a sign of how behind the times they are. They're making hipster jokes now?
posted by dunkadunc at 2:09 PM on March 4, 2013 [6 favorites]

Wow, the Gangnam Style cover is outrageously over the top in its pure hideousness. Adding in King Kong and the Statue of Liberty is just gas on the fire. I sincerely regret that this cover did not carry the day.
posted by whir at 2:17 PM on March 4, 2013 [11 favorites]

It's not too much of a stretch to say Eustace was the archetype of hipsters. For an amusing example, the reference in the article you've linked as "A little bit more about Eustace" to the harvesting of artisanal trees for the paper of the magazine in 1925. Eustace was a hipster not only before that was cool, but before they even had a name for it.
posted by JimInLoganSquare at 2:18 PM on March 4, 2013 [3 favorites]

I did this last year, but I couldn't help but feel like the exercise was very derivative (combine $_REF_POPCULTURE with This Guy) so I drew Eustace as a cat holding a laser pointer. I didn't qualify because my sister worked at The Strand at the time.
posted by hellojed at 2:20 PM on March 4, 2013

Count D'Dorsay.
posted by BWA at 2:20 PM on March 4, 2013

Of course, "fop" is not a word. It's supposed to be "foop".
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:23 PM on March 4, 2013

Many people who write for and read The New Yorker never leave the alternate version of Manhattan in which they exist. In their version, they still buy books at Shakespeare & Co, spend Sunday mornings with the NYT and bagels from H&H, talk about Woody Allen and Kierkegaard, and are afraid of the park after dusk.
posted by Ad hominem at 2:23 PM on March 4, 2013 [12 favorites]

cute, someone saved a back-issue from 2008

OH SNAP
posted by threeants at 2:23 PM on March 4, 2013 [4 favorites]

I saw that cover and saw it as a sign of how behind the times they are. They're making hipster jokes now?

At least you can't say the New Yorker was making jokes before it was cool to make hipster jokes.
posted by KokuRyu at 2:23 PM on March 4, 2013 [1 favorite]

They had a name for it. Dandy.
posted by molecicco at 2:24 PM on March 4, 2013

"Ecce Tilley" is legit funny, though. Ecce everything!!!
posted by threeants at 2:36 PM on March 4, 2013 [1 favorite]

Couldn't help noticing, given the VIDA post earlier today, that of the 12 featured Tilley cover submissions for 2013, 4 are from women and 8 from men.
posted by DrMew at 2:39 PM on March 4, 2013

On the artist:

He now lives in Brooklyn—indeed, in Park Slope. “This is not me,” he says of his cover, “I certainly move in a world where those people exist—they’re all around me—but they’re not my people. I’ve been identified as a Brooklyn hipster, but I’m sure I’m sort of at the edge of that Venn diagram.”

A better sketch than the actual cover, I think.

I like this one.
posted by postcommunism at 2:43 PM on March 4, 2013 [1 favorite]

Making a hipster joke in 2013 is kind of dadcore.
posted by 2bucksplus at 2:44 PM on March 4, 2013 [10 favorites]

I find it interesting that all three hipsters have identically-placed neck tattoos, and two of them have floppy hats and curly red beards. These similarities arising independently definitely speak to a zeitgeist.
posted by kafziel at 2:46 PM on March 4, 2013 [1 favorite]

So many "meme of the moment" entries, especially "up-to-his-tall-collar-in-water-due-to-Sandy-or-Climate-Change"...

Still, some avoided trendiness in favor of other good symbolism:
Baby Eustice
Thurber's Tilley
The Wonder Lander
another Wonder Lander
Peeping Tilley?
The Magazine Behind the Man
An Assortment of Eustices with an Assortment of Butterflies
Tilley Superpowered?
Clothes Make the Man
...and I'm only through page 20 of 49...
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:49 PM on March 4, 2013

Many people who write for and read The New Yorker never leave the alternate version of Manhattan in which they exist. In their version, they still buy books at Shakespeare & Co, spend Sunday mornings with the NYT and bagels from H&H, talk about Woody Allen and Kierkegaard, and are afraid of the park after dusk.

And sitting on those rent controlled "classic six" apartments in the w 90s.
posted by The Whelk at 2:52 PM on March 4, 2013 [2 favorites]

all three hipsters have identically-placed neck tattoos

Yeah, the tattoos are all nautical inspired too. It's pretty funny. I'd estimate a good 2/3 of the population of New York as one of those star tattoos at this point. The other 1/3 has a tattoo of a blue bird. Shit is de rigueur. Excepting MeFites of course.
posted by Ad hominem at 2:54 PM on March 4, 2013

Of course, "fop" is not a word.

It don't look like a one horse town, but try getting a decent hair jelly.
posted by ceribus peribus at 2:57 PM on March 4, 2013 [5 favorites]

The word "dude" was used in the early 1900s to mean a flashy man from out west, probobly recently monied and unmarked, in styles too loud for Eastern blue bloods.

Words change!
posted by The Whelk at 3:00 PM on March 4, 2013

Also people started getting those stars about five years after every new converted mill into condo building got those stars nailed to them.
posted by The Whelk at 3:01 PM on March 4, 2013

They're making hipster jokes now?

If you click the "hipster" tag on this page you'll see that Metafilter is decidedly a glass house from which to throw that particular stone.
posted by yoink at 3:14 PM on March 4, 2013 [3 favorites]

I'm just excited because the artist phoned this in as a Jordan Jesse Go momentous occasion.
posted by drezdn at 3:17 PM on March 4, 2013

I liked the tramp stamp one, personally. It seems to riff on the permanance/ephemerality tension.

As for Thurber's Tilley, rather surprised the man himself never did it.

In general, though, these show how difficult it is to pull off a good NYer cover.
posted by dhartung at 4:40 PM on March 4, 2013

Once again, it seems someone is confused about the difference between Dandies and Fops.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 5:52 PM on March 4, 2013 [3 favorites]

The King of the Dudes was from NYC--and around the same time, the term was used for Easterners out of place in the West. The cover is clever, even if it depicts someone who's just moved into my downtown LA neighborhood.
posted by Ideefixe at 6:06 PM on March 4, 2013

Dunkadunc:

I saw that cover and saw it as a sign of how behind the times they are. They're making hipster jokes now?

2bucksplus:

Making a hipster joke in 2013 is kind of dadcore.


Yeah, I think you guys are totally missing the entire joke about Eustace Tilley...
posted by graphnerd at 7:43 PM on March 4, 2013 [1 favorite]

(And was that last comment smug? Yes, yes it was. It was a reaction to criticism of The New Yorker, how could I, in any way, coöperate with such obvious drivel?)
posted by graphnerd at 7:45 PM on March 4, 2013 [6 favorites]

coöperate

If I could double- or triple-favorite your post for that word alone, I would.
posted by Ranucci at 9:37 PM on March 4, 2013

"The knowingness and the name-dropping that characterized the early issues disappeared."
But now it's back!
posted by knile at 1:05 AM on March 5, 2013

I learned last week that in fact you can't play "fop" in Words With Friends. Which is some bullshit.

I could have had a Triple Word Score!
posted by Rangeboy at 7:36 AM on March 5, 2013

They're making hipster jokes now?

I don't get this criticism (not on graphnerd's grounds). It's not a hipster joke, it's an elevation of the hipster-as-archetype to something the New Yorker is willing to recognize. They're not going to Eustace Tillify every passing pop-cultural moment (I hope).
posted by kenko at 8:10 AM on March 5, 2013

Also, I think this is a good and clever rendition, so, you know. Odisse odientibus est esse, I guess.
posted by kenko at 8:11 AM on March 5, 2013